Friday May 13, 2011
Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday May 13, 2011
Liberals need to rebuild from the ground up
It’s been a week since the Liberals saw their party pushed to the precipice, and by now stunned disbelief should be giving way to a concern over what to do next.
The Liberals probably should have spent some time soul-searching and trying to figure out just how and why the party lost its historic connection to Canadian voters.
But before it crosses that bridge, it might want to concern itself with another dilemma, how it has managed to alienate diehard, card-carrying members of the Liberal Party.
It wasn’t just soft Liberals who abandoned the party, but many people who have never voted anything but Liberal held their noses and not only voted for the NDP, but for Stephen Harper and the Conservatives as well.
Given the scope of last week’s defeat, the Liberals will have to rebuild the Big Red Machine from the ground up, and that will include Liberal workers and party members at the riding level.
But given the autocratic series of decisions made by the Liberals over the last decade or so, it may not be easy to bring even those staunch Liberal supporters back into the fold.
Canada’s governing party, supposedly by divine right, began to unravel when haughty Liberal insiders, not voters or members of the party, began to openly suggest it was time for Jean Chretien to step aside as prime minister to make way for their man.
These Liberal decision makers, unconcerned about what the voters or even party faithful might think, began to discredit their leader and were pushing then-finance minister Paul Martin to the front of the queue to replace Chretien, despite the prime minister’s ability to weave a series of majority governments. (London Free Press)